Salem installed portable bathrooms at Wallace Marine Park after closing the permanent restroom and shutting off the water to the drinking fountains because of concerns about virus spread. (Saphara Harrell/Salem Reporter)
The Salem City Council on Monday approved $1.2 million in funding to go toward homeless services as shelter capacity is limited because of Covid and Salem’s biggest homeless shelter is seeing an outbreak that further limits beds.
The money is coming out of the city’s general fund, from funds left over from the last fiscal year.
Most of the money – $733,780 – is to pay for a shelter site or sites the city hasn’t found yet. The city is looking at shelter options and if it finds one, the money will be used to pay for management of a location through June.
The city’s homeless liaison, Gretchen Bennett, said the money could be used for a permanent shelter or one that operates during the winter. She said she’s been looking for locations, but so far hasn’t found anything that’s viable. One of the places community members have suggested, the Oregon State Fairgrounds, is state-owned. Another location she looked at is in a wetland.
The city is also looking for more sites for the Salem Warming Network, and approved an additional $30,000 Monday to help find and manage additional locations through the winter.
This year there are two new duration warming locations to help compensate for the loss of space due to Covid. Duration sites openly nightly versus temperature-activated sites that open when the weather dips below freezing.
Another $180,900 will go toward the two parks in west Salem and southeast Salem where hundreds of people have been allowed to camp since the start of the pandemic. That money will pay for a permanent drinking fountain, installing a waterline for potable water at the northern part of Wallace Marine Park, an all-terrain vehicle to get trash out of the furthest reaches of the parks, additional garbage service, portable restrooms and handwashing stations.
City Manager Steve Powers told councilors that an additional $120,000 was set aside to “allow staff to move quickly” to supply additional assistance for issues related to homelessness should the need arise.
He said the intent is to relieve pressure on the two camping locations.
“I can’t tell you this evening specifically what that will look like. That is an overall goal of this recommendation,” Powers said.
The council also voted to extend the emergency declaration that allowed camping in city parks until October 2021.
Bennett said there are approximately 1,500 people in Salem without shelter and only 300 shelter beds.
“We clearly have over 1,00 individuals in the Salem area and at this time don’t have locations, so it’s definitely a challenge,” Bennett said.
Powers said the city is looking at options for an organized camp as well.
“I don’t want to mislead or set unrealistic expectations, it is a very challenging situation for us,” he said.
The funding will also bolster the city’s “Cash for Trash” pilot program, which incentivizes collecting garbage by handing out gift cards to campers who do so. The city allocated $50,000 to continue the program through June.
Mark Becktel, the city’s public works operations manager, said the city is taking a three-pronged approach to garbage accumulation at the parks and at camps around the city.
The first is the “Cash for Trash” program, the second is providing more dumpsters and the third is going into the camps to collect garbage.
“We can’t move these folks, we can only clean around them,” he said.
In the past week, Becktel said the city partnered with the state Department of Transportation to clean up trash at the Market Street interchange along Interstate 5 and had another cleanup planned Tuesday for underneath the Marion Street Bridge downtown.
Another $14,000 will pay for towing vehicles left at either Wallace Marine Park or Cascades Gateway Park.
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Have a tip? Contact reporter Saphara Harrell at 503-549-6250, [email protected] or @daisysaphara.
